I write these posts every year to sort out my feelings toward some of the more prominent movies I've made a conscious decision to skip watching. Below are seven movies that didn't make the cut this year - and it's been quite a year. At a few points I was watching pretty much every new release I could get my hands on, but we have to draw the line somewhere, as I'll discuss below. I reserve the right to revisit and reverse my viewing choices in the future. However, I still haven't watched anything from last year's list.
Midnight Sky - Along with "Hillbilly Elegy," and "The Last Full Measure," this title has fallen victim to my growing lack of patience with awards season fodder. In another year I might have checked this out simply because it was a George Clooney passion project, and some of those have been interesting over the years. However, the roundly mediocre reviews, unappealing plot, and glum dystopian setting have thoroughly put me off. I'm actually more likely to watch "Hillbilly Elegy" for the trainwreck factor.
Boys State - I feel the most guilt about this one because it's gotten so much praise and it's the kind of tiny documentary that needs as much attention as it can get. However, 2020 has soured me on political films, and I barely managed to get through the "Borat" film. I'm absolutely in no mood for another eye-opening piece on how screwed up the American political system is right now, so this and Jon Stewart's "Irresistible" are out of luck. No hard feelings, but I need some distance from the topic.
City Hall - Frederick Wiseman films are boring. There, I said it. Sometimes I'm perfectly receptive and appreciative of boring, and I've loved other Wiseman films about museums and libraries and so on. However, 272 minutes of anything is a lot to take, and spending them hanging around Boston's City Hall is just not going to happen this year. I may come back to it eventually, but there are several other Wiseman films I'm more keen on watching first, including that 244 minute documentary on UC Berkeley.
Tesla - I seem to have a thing about avoiding Ethan Hawke, lately. He's very good in the right project, but in others he can get awfully self-indulgent. And while I've liked Michael Almereyda's last two films, self-indulgent seems to be the right descriptor for "Tesla," which is full of little anachronistic gimmicks and fussy framing devices. I've seen enough bad takes on Tesla over the past few years that I'm not in any hurry to add another one to the list, even if the movie turns out to be good.
The King of Staten Island - Judd Apatow films are hit or miss for me, and I'm undecided on the charms of Pete Davidson, but I can safely say that a 137 minute feature from these two, about a manchild learning to adult, is an automatic no. No thank you, we've had enough of that for the foreseeable future. I went through a phase where I couldn't stand angsty teen films, before they became nostalgic viewing. Maybe I'm going through the same thing with "failure to launch" movies about people in their twenties.
The Godfather Coda - Really, Francis Ford Coppola? We couldn't leave "The Godfather, Part III" alone after all this time? Really? Reactions to the new cut haven't been bad, and I'm open to taking a look at this someday, maybe when I inevitably revisit the first two films. However, me making time specifically for a recut version of "Part III" is not in the cards. To date, I've also avoided the alternate cuts of Coppola's other films, like "Apocalypse Now" and "The Cotton Club."
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